Thunderbird Online Blog

Our increasingly digital world has removed borders and has made companies focus on adopting a more unified marketing strategy. For marketers looking to expand their reach to new audiences, this makes a great case for looking at a unified global marketing strategy to ensure your message is identified within countries outside of your headquarters. Here are 4 tips to begin developing your global marketing strategy.

Know the Market

When you first decide you want to expand your marketing to a global level, you need to understand the environment with which you will be working. Each region of the world has different norms and behaviors when it comes to marketing messages, what is appropriate in that country, how people prefer to be contacted, and more. Be sure to do research on how that market will respond to your marketing strategy so you get the most traction from your new audience.

Develop a Marketing Plan

Succeeding in a global environment does not mean simply changing the language of your efforts. You will want your global marketing plan to be consistent with your domestic efforts, but it will need to be customized based on the knowledge of the region. After you have some insight into the global landscape, you can craft a plan to outline your course of action. The plan will start with the identification of your goals and objectives — Why are you expanding your efforts? What are you looking to achieve? How will you measure success? Once these are established, you can sketch a path covering the overarching strategy and the tactics to achieve those goals.

Customize Your Marketing Approach

You will likely decide to start your global marketing efforts online to reach a global audience and centralize your efforts there. But remember that what worked for reaching your domestic audience may not translate well overseas. Be sure to adapt your initiatives to fit the audience you are trying to reach to create a customized experience for them. What works well in one country or one region, will likely not yield the same results in other markets. Speak to the needs of that particular region to market your product or service, and customize your approach for that environment.

Localize Your Message

Just because you are taking your efforts to a global audience does not mean you cannot still localize your message. Actually it is almost necessary to be “glocal” with your message when targeting a global audience. It is not only important to understand the cultural and language barriers and adjust your message for each market, but it is also crucial to understand all cultural references, and significant events and holidays. Platforms and tactics need to be tailored to the region to create a more personalized experience and really connect with the audience on a deeper level.

The brands that execute global marketing well have a local identity, but remain consistent across borders. Discover the best practices on how to take your marketing strategy to new countries and regions. Download the syllabus for Thunderbird Online’s Executive Certificate in Global Marketing to view the course objectives for this program.

Please share your tips and ideas of how you developed and executed your global marketing strategy.